(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display module and, more particularly, to a liquid crystal display module having a structure for facilitating coupling and decoupling between modules.
(b) Description of the Related Art
As a display device for desktop personal computers, it is required to reduce the space therefor, to assure safety to users and to solve the earth environmental problems by replacing the CRT display devices having cathode-ray tubes with liquid crystal display (LCD) devices. In addition, the demand for a larger screen is increased due to the increase in the amount of information to be displayed on the screen for the personal computer.
It is difficult to fabricate a liquid crystal display panel having a screen size exceeding 1 m.sup.2 (square meters) by using a single liquid crystal display device. For providing a larger screen of the liquid crystal display, a display device having a plurality of liquid crystal display modules coupled in the vertical and horizontal direction (referred to as "large screen display device", hereinafter) is studied and described in, for instance, JP-A-4(1992)-292087, JP-A-2-275490 and JP-A-2-275491.
FIG. 1 is a front view of a large screen display device described in JP-A-4-292087. The liquid crystal display module, in general, has a horizontal driver 52 and a vertical driver 54 for driving the liquid crystal display panel on the horizontal side and a vertical side of the panel, respectively. That is, when the liquid crystal display modules are coupled together, a non-display part exists between the adjacent liquid crystal display modules due to the existence of the horizontal driver 52 and the vertical driver 54 to deteriorate the continuity of the screen. JP-A-4-292087 proposes for solving the above problem, a liquid crystal display module having the horizontal driver 52 on a side wall and the vertical drivers 54 on the side wall adjacent to the horizontal drivers. Two liquid crystal display modules are connected to each other on the other side walls not having the horizontal driver 52 and the vertical drivers 54, thereby forming a single large screen display device similar to the display device shown in FIG. 1.
FIG. 2 is a front view of another large screen display device described in JP-A-2-275490. The display device has a plurality of frames 56 and a plurality of liquid crystal display modules 57 adhered to one another through the frame 56 by adhesive to implement a large screen display device. JP-A-2-275491 reduces the number of inlets for filling the liquid crystal into the liquid crystal panel as small as possible, to reduce the width of the non-display part for improving the structure described in JP-A-2-275490, thereby reducing the width of the lattice body.
When a large screen display device exhibits a failure, it is necessary to repair and exchange the defective parts such as a liquid crystal panel, a printed circuit board, or a driver. The large screen display device fabricated by using conventional liquid crystal display modules has a problem in that it requires a large amount of work for removing the defective liquid crystal display modules from the large screen display device to repair and exchange the defective module. In addition, when the liquid crystal display modules are assembled again after the repair and exchange of the parts, exact coupling of the connectors is difficult to achieve. Moreover, since the liquid crystal display module is designed as a dedicated module for the large screen display device, the single module cannot be used as a liquid crystal display panel for a small sized personal computer by extracting the same from the large screen display device.